by Don Winslow
“Same guy?” Ben asks.
“Looks like it.”
“Same guy I met with today,” Ben says. “Our new boss—Miguel Arroyo Salazar.”
“He’s a dead fucker,” Chon says. Sooner or later, he’s going.
So, Ben continues, Elena recruits Zeta—pays them well, gives them their own turf to use, and tells them, “Go forth and prosper.” Go north, young men, and take California (back).
“Why?” Ben asks rhetorically.
“Because that’s where the money is,” Chon answers rhetorically.
Or is it something else? Ben ponders.
He lets that slide, though.
First things first and the first thing is to get O back alive.
Buy her back.
“We have enough here to move on,” Chon says.
Fuck context.
Let’s get to content.
143
We have to be careful, Ben thinks.
We have to be beyond careful. If the BC gets one whiff that we’re using their own money to pay them, they’ll kill O.
So—
144
They find the address in one of Dennis’s files.
Way out in the new eastern housing developments that hug the mountains.
Cougar country.
Not the new kind of cougar, the old kind of cougar, actual big cats.
Dennis has had it under watch for months. Rented by one Ron Cabral, a known associate, etc.
Now Ben and Chon have it up.
They watch the cars come and go, late at night or early in the morning, usually before dawn. They get a sense of when the runs are made, when deliveries come in, go out, how many men.
Stash house.
Where money is kept until it’s packed up and delivered south.
Or not, as the case may be.
145
Chon parks the Mustang two miles away and hikes in through the thick chaparral on the hillsides.
Feels almost good to be humping it again.
He plops his ass down, gets out the nocs, and scopes the terrain until he finds what he’s looking for—a sharp curve in the road away from the houses. Takes a mental snapshot and stores it.
I-Rock-and-Roll, Stanland, SoCal.
An ambush is an ambush.
Is an ambush.
146
They go over it a gazillion times.
In Ben’s opinion.
Not enough in Chon’s.
“It’s no fucking game,” Chon says.
“Didn’t say it is,” Ben responds. “What I’m saying is I got it. It’s in my head.”
Yeah, but Chon knows it goes out of your head the second the action starts and the adrenaline kicks in. Then it’s all muscle memory that comes from repetition, repetition, repetition.
So they go over it again.
147
O makes the rounds of the talk shows.
O-prah, of course.
OPRAH
. . . a story of courage, of … inspiring … dignity. Please welcome O.
The audience applauds. A few stand. O, demure in a gray dress, walks out, shyly acknowledges the applause, and sits down.
OPRAH
What a truly amazing experience. What did you learn? What did you take away?
O
Well, Oprah, you know, when you’re alone that long you have no choice but to confront yourself. I think you gain a self-knowledge. You really learn about yourself.
Oprah looks to the women in the audience and smiles. “Isn’t this girl amazing?” She turns back to O.
OPRAH
(softly)
What did you learn?
O
How strong I really am. How strong a woman …
an inner strength that I hadn’t fully realized …
Applause.
OPRAH
Next, a truly awe-inspiring example of courage under pressure—O’s mother, Paqu.
O moves on to Ellen.
ELLEN
Give it up for MTV’s O!
O, in a jaunty sleeveless T-shirt that displays her tattoos, breaks out a few dance moves and then plops down in the guest chair.
ELLEN
You’ve had quite a time of it, haven’t you?
O
Oh yeah. But first—you get to do Portia de Rossi? I’d trade jerseys for that.
The audience cracks up.
She dances with Ellen, then
On to Dr. Phil.
DR. PHIL
… the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and I’m a big believer that you teach people how to treat you. You have to consent to be a hostage, and if you don’t own your part in this then you have no power to fix it. I’ve been doing kidnap and hostage cases for thirty-five years, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. For every rat you see there are fifty you don’t.
O
You’re a fucking asshole.
DR. PHIL
I’m prepared to offer you first-class help if you’ll take it. But I’m not playing games here, we’re going to drill down and get to the bottom of this, I’m just an old country boy—
O
And an asshole.
Oh, girl, she tells herself—you have to get it together.
148
Ben drops Chon off at Seizure World—
—a retirement community really called Leisure World, so you figure it out—
—after midnight when the old people are asleep, but before 4:00 AM, when they all wake up again—
—and Chon walks around until he finds a Lincoln he likes. It takes him eighteen seconds to jimmy the door, another thirty to hot-wire it (“fruits of a misspent youth”), and he drives it away and hides it in a strip mall parking lot in SJC, where Ben picks him up.
“You know what you get when you cross a Mexican with a Chinese?” Chon asks.
“What?”
“A car thief who can’t drive.”
149
“You okay?” Chon asks.
“I’m stoked,” Ben answers.
“Don’t be too stoked,” Chon says. “Smoke up, chill.”
“That would be okay?”
“Yeah.”
Chon doesn’t fucking know if it would be okay. He’s gone on night missions before but not like this one. Guesses it’s pretty much the same, though. You want to be wired, but not too wired.
Ben just looks nervous, edgy.
But determined in that serious Ben way.
They smoke up, a selected indica-sativa blend that will smooth them out but still leave them alert.
Just to take the edge off.
They drive to the stolen Lincoln and head out.
East on Highway 74, aka the Ortega Highway, traversing (Chon likes that word) the Santa Ana Mountains from Mission Viejo to Lake Snore—
Etymology:
Lake Elsinore—
it’s a sleepy little town, ya—
Lake Snore.
The Ortega is about as rural as you get in Orange County anymore and it’s a good place for grow houses (relevant) and meth labs (irrelevant, at the moment, anyway). They turn north onto one of the many narrow roads that run off the spine of the highway like broken ribs through forests of post oaks.
They pull the car over onto a dirt … pullover … at a stop sign by a T-junction.
Chon gets out and ties a red rag to the car’s door handle, opens the hood, and rips out the battery cables. He gets back in and tells Ben to lie down on the seat and put the mask on.
Ben went to Party City in Costa Mesa and decided on a talk-show theme. So here they are—Leno, Letterman—waiting to do their opening monologue.
Now his hand flexes on the butt of the pistol in his lap.
“You only use that,” Chon says, “if you have to.”
“No shit.”
“No different than a v-ball game,” Chon says. “Focus and teamwork.”
Few minutes later they hear a car coming up the road.
“You ready?” Chon asks.
Ben’s throat closes up.
Chon feels nothing.
The van slows for the stop sign. The guard in the passenger seat sees the broken-down Lincoln but doesn’t think a thing about it until the car suddenly pulls in front of the van and blocks the road.
Chon is out of the car in a fucking flash.
Has the shotgun pointed at the driver’s window.
The driver starts to put it in reverse, but Chon aims at his head and the driver changes his mind. The passenger goes for the pistol on the seat but Ben is at his window with the .22 trained on him.
“Drop it,” Ben says, which he’s heard in about a thousand TV shows so it almost makes him giggle to say it. But the guy drops the gun on the floor of the car.
Chon opens the door, grabs the driver, and jerks him out and onto the ground as Ben gestures for the passenger to get out. The passenger does, looks at Ben, and says in Spanish, “You don’t know who you’re fucking with. We’re with La Treinte.”
Ben points the gun to the ground, like, get down.
The passenger yawns elaborately to show he’s not scared, then eases himself onto the ground, trying to keep the red dirt off his white shirt.
Chon keeps the shotgun on the driver while Ben gets into the van and quickly finds the money. He also finds the GPS tracking device stuck in there with the cash and tosses it on the ground.
Says, “Vamanos.”
Chon shoots twice, into the front and back tires of the van.
Then they get into the Lincoln and take off.
150
“That was so cool!”
Ben is lit freaking up.
Adrenaline high. Endorphins bouncing off the cell walls like a schizophrenic playing racquetball against himself. Like nothing he’s ever experienced.
“Count it,” Chon says.
$765,500.
A start.
151
“We found the Lincoln,” Hector tells Lado.
Lado shrugs. “Where?”
“Parking lot at the San Juan train station,” Hector answers. “It’s registered to a Floyd Hendrickson. He’s eighty-three years old and reported it stolen this morning.”
They go to talk to the driver and the pendejo who was riding shotgun.
Lado and Hector take them to a big date farm out near Indio and put them in a shed where they keep tractors and shit. The two sit on the dirt floor leaning against the corrugated-tin wall and they develop verbal diarrhea. Keep shitting on and on about how there were two of them, a shotgun and two pistols, real pros …
Lado already knows they were pros—they knew when, where, and what, and they knew to look for the GPS.
“Two of them? You sure?” Lado asks.
They’re really sure.
Two tall guys.
Lado thinks that’s interesting.
Wearing masks.
“What kind of masks?”
Yanqui television hosts.
Jay Leno and …
“Letterman,” the driver says.
The other one got the car make and license plate.
“It’s a wonder,” Lado says, “that neither of you two got hurt at all.”
Very fortunate, they agree.
Yeah, well, that ain’t gonna last.
152
Lado is pretty sure they’re telling the truth and had nothing to do with it.
Other than being stupid, lazy cowards and letting it happen.
These cabróns have families down in Mexico, SOP for anyone working for the BC on this side of the border—you have to have family where the BC can reach out and touch them.
Fuck job references—you want to guarantee good performance and loyalty you keep parents, brothers and sisters, even cousins in your pocket. Men who think nothing of risking their own lives would never think of risking their families’.
He tosses the bullwhip to the ground.
Two tall guys …
No, it’s not likely. How would the two gueros know the location of the stash house, the route the drivers take?
They couldn’t.
No, a tombe like this has to be an inside job. Maybe not these two pendejos, but someone inside.
“Cut them down,” he snaps.
153
Designer coffee joint on Ritz-Carlton Drive.
And the PCH, coast side.
Chon refers to the place as Yummy Mummy Heaven.
Useta park himself at one of the outdoor tables, sip cappuccinos, and watch the parade of rich young mommies jog past pushing their three-wheeled running strollers. Tight bodies in T-shirts (or designer hoodies, in colder weather) and sweatpants.
“That’s the early shift,” he explained to Ben.
The later shift involves the exclusive day care just up the street. The slightly older YMs would drop the brats off and then come in for their lattes and, maybe, post-latte sex with Chon.
“Bored and resentful,” Chon observed to Ben. “Perfect in bed.”
“Adulterer.”
“I’m not married.”
“What ever happened to morality?” Ben sighed.
“Same thing that happened to CDs.”
Replaced by a newer, faster, easier technology.
Ben asked, “What would O think about these squalid escapades?”
“You kidding?” Chon answered. “She talent-spots for me.”
“Shut up.”
No, it’s truth. O, when she can get up that early, has spent many happy hours handicapping Chon’s odds. That one’s hot, that one’s horny, that one is happy at home, forget her, check out that ass, I’d do that one …
“Did she ever …”
“Nah.”
They’re not thinking about O’s barely latent lesbian tendencies or Yummy Mummys this morning. They’re thinking about O, however, as
Alex and Jaime walk in—
“Siamese beaners.”
“Easy.”
—stand at the counter and order coffee to go.
Ben and Chon follow them out to the parking lot and get in the backseat of Alex’s Mercedes.
“What?” Ben asks.
Alex turns around to look at Ben. “One of our cars was hijacked last night.”
Ben is stone. The son of two incessantly probing shrinks, he knows how to outface an interrogation.
“So?”
Alex is an amateur at this.
Shows all over his lawyer face. “Would you know anything about it?”
Ben jumps all over the conditional tense. “Yeah, I would know something about it, if I had anything to do with it. Seeing as how I didn’t, I don’t.”
Fun with language.
Alex tries Chon for a stare-down.
Yeah, that’s going to work.
Try making a Rottweiler blink.
“Okay,” Alex says finally.
Chon is Chon but Ben is Ben. “Try not calling me out for nonsense in the future, okay? How is O?”
“Who?”
“Who”? Chon looks like he might slap the guy. It’s a real possibility there for a second, but Ben jumps in. “Ophelia. We call her O. The young lady you kidnapped. How is she? We want to talk to her.”
“Maybe that can be worked out,” Alex says.
Ben notices the passive verb form.
Responsibility is being avoided, or
Authority is not possessed.
Interesting.
“Work it out,” Ben says. He opens the car door. “If there’s nothing else, Chon has marriages to destroy and I have product to produce.”
They stand in the parking lot as the Mercedes pulls away.
“You’re good,” Chon says. “You think they really suspect us?”
“If they did, we’d have seen Chain Saw Guy.”
They walk back to the shop.
“By the way?” Chon says. “I feel I make the marriages better.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
154
The myth about drug-trade hijacking
is that it’s the perfect crime because the victims can’t report the theft to the police.
Uhhhhhhhh …
They might not file a police report, but that doesn’t mean they won’t report it to the police.
It just has to be the right police.
Alex happens to know a few.
For example, Deputy Brian Berlinger of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has a nice A-frame in Big Bear that he likes to go to on weekends and holidays. Which is why right now he’s on his computer researching which stores in the OC stock Leno and Letterman masks.
155
For the next hijacking, Ben decides on movie stars.
“I think I’m going gay,” he tells Chon.
“No surprise, but specifically …”
“I’m frighteningly into this theme thing,” Ben says as he looks at his choices on an Internet catalog. “If the dope and robbery don’t work out, maybe I could go into event planning.”
“Or suck cock.”
“There’s always that,” Ben admits. He studies the offerings. “You want to be Brad Pitt or George Clooney?”
“Beyond gay. You make gay look straight.”
“Choose.”
“Clooney.”
Ben hits “Buy.”
Chon’s on his own lappie.
Google Earth.
Aerial view of the next crime scene.
156
They’ll be looking for it this time.
They’ll be alert.
No shit.
Lado has put the word out, you see something on the side of the road, you don’t stop, you don’t slow down, you hit the gas, ese.
You keep driving, no matter what.